Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

blog.liw.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 165 posts

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#151

Post by ncr100 »

sandsmark wrote: post #87
omaranto wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone is curious about the name of the main UI, "xochitl", it is a fairly common female name (for people, not UIs) in Mexico. It means flower in Náhuatl, the language of spoken by the Aztecs and still spoken by between 1 and 2 million people in Mexico. The Spanish word for flower, "Flor", is also a fairly common female name in Mexico. The name "Xóchitl" is pronounced with the "x" sounding like "s" and the "t…

Picture of one of the first prototypes (from 2015 or thereabouts) from remarkable.com/careers, guess the naming scheme: https://images.ctfassets.net/og7ujiyra5gx/15KAaMUsNXP8cQu3lP... :-)

Thanks Martin - good origin story.

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#152

Post by justinclift »

diggan wrote: post #81
elteto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try downloading it by chance? I get 404 on that toolchain link...

Strange, getting alternative responses of 404 and 200 when doing a request, with the 200 page showing > It's sunday, we'll try to get it up during next week. > In the meantime a normal cross-compiling ARM toolchain should work (e. g. the one packaged in Ubuntu). Edit: now a added "Sorry, forgot to update this..." so seems someone updated the link right now

Unless the date stamp of that .sh file isn't recent. ;)

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#153

Post by justinclift »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #28

I'm a fairly early adopter of the RM, and bought it for keeping handwritten notes. I don't produce a great amount of notes as a student might, but I find that the experience of writing really helps me think. Some thoughts on the device: * The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tac…

Would it be feasible to put alternative PDF reader software on it instead?

Since it seems like their proprietary software stack is crap, but the hardware is good, then getting decent software on it may be the better route. :)

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#154

Post by justinclift »

lima wrote: post #23
rvdca wrote: post #16

I am actually wondering to see I buy one. Here is some links that I find interesting to consider before buying (some of those do answer some previous comments) : * Here is a [previous occurrence on HN]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16321531 ). * Here is a ["curated list of (code) projects related to the reMarkable tablet"]( https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable ). * Here is a [framework]( https://g…

There's a pretty active developer community! Main community resources are on Reddit and Discord: - https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet - https://discord.gg/n89uDN You can use the tablet without the proprietary cloud platform by using the built-in web interface to transfer data.

Any idea if it's possible to generate new firmware yourself, and flash that?

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#155

Post by 314 »

sandsmark wrote: post #84
codetrotter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t realize it until visiting your HN profile but I see you are one of the people behind reMarkable! And you guys are based in Norway too! A few questions if you don’t mind. How many people are in your company? What are the current and future plans of the company in terms of product? Keep improving the software for the current hardware? Make new models with different hardware? Where in Norway are you located? Ar…

We generally have a policy of not communicating externally by default (way too many startups have failed because of loose lips and over-promising), but I'll answer with what's already known publicly. :-) > How many people are in your company? Around 70¹. > Where in Norway are you located? Oslo¹ (or you can search for reMarkable on google maps). > Are you looking to increase the number of people working in your compan…

Have you considered hiring remotely? (I read your recruitment pages and while it does not say that you don’t explicitly your hiring process looks as if you are recruiting only for on-site positions).

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#156

Post by diffeomorphism »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #28

I'm a fairly early adopter of the RM, and bought it for keeping handwritten notes. I don't produce a great amount of notes as a student might, but I find that the experience of writing really helps me think. Some thoughts on the device: * The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tac…

Is the writing feel due hardware or software?

I remember reading that remarkable spent quite a bit of work on getting the latency of the pen input very low (which I guess is important for the feel).

However, for the tactile feel I would guess that the screen coating and the pen nib material are even more important (e.g. felt nibs or matte screen protectors)?

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#157

Post by diggan »

justinclift wrote: post #152
diggan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, getting alternative responses of 404 and 200 when doing a request, with the 200 page showing > It's sunday, we'll try to get it up during next week. > In the meantime a normal cross-compiling ARM toolchain should work (e. g. the one packaged in Ubuntu). Edit: now a added "Sorry, forgot to update this..." so seems someone updated the link right now

Unless the date stamp of that .sh file isn't recent. ;)

Was thinking more because if I made three requests, I got three different responses, so it seemed I was making requests while things were still being propagated

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#158

Post by ACS_Solver »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #156
ACS_Solver wrote: post #28

I'm a fairly early adopter of the RM, and bought it for keeping handwritten notes. I don't produce a great amount of notes as a student might, but I find that the experience of writing really helps me think. Some thoughts on the device: * The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tac…

Is the writing feel due hardware or software? I remember reading that remarkable spent quite a bit of work on getting the latency of the pen input very low (which I guess is important for the feel). However, for the tactile feel I would guess that the screen coating and the pen nib material are even more important (e.g. felt nibs or matte screen protectors)?

Hardware primarily. They've done a great job with the latency as well, but if you close your eyes and write on the RM, it's almost like writing in a paper notebook. It's the combination of the screen and the marker tips. As the marker tip gets worn out, the paper feeling gradually gets worse.

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#159

Post by ACS_Solver »

m463 wrote: post #143
ACS_Solver wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, unlike most Android devices, you don't have to root the RM. It comes with SSH running and you have the root password. The company's Github [1] has most of the source code, from their Linux kernel to the software update daemon. Their CTO, Martin Sandsmark, is a long-time KDE developer. Unfortunately, xochitl (the device's main UI) isn't open. It's a major miss in their open approach, and frankly I don't get w…

Can you use the device locally (no cloud or "activation" or account, etc)

You can - if you don't do the cloud setup, the RM won't try to sync anything. Then your file management options are the device's built-in software (which is viable prototype quality, not shipping quality) or some custom scripting. Given that this is HN, you're probably better off writing some small scripts to manage the device via SSH or curl.

Re: The ReMarkable Tablet: A Review

#160

Post by ACS_Solver »

jdeeny wrote: post #146
ACS_Solver wrote: post #28

I'm a fairly early adopter of the RM, and bought it for keeping handwritten notes. I don't produce a great amount of notes as a student might, but I find that the experience of writing really helps me think. Some thoughts on the device: * The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tac…

The software, on and off tablet, feels like it was an MVP and now they are improving it gradually. The quality of the existing software is actually pretty good, everything is smooth and polished. It is just not very packed with features. It is incredibly easy to come up with must-have and would-be-nice features for this device. The hardware is a dream and there is clearly a huge potential. I saw they are hiring softw…

> The quality of the existing software is actually pretty good, everything is smooth and polished. It is just not very packed with features.

I would say it's very far from polished, but it's finally okay now. It took a long time to get there though. I don't even want any particular features for the device, it should be just like a paper notebook, with minimalistic software. It was only in this spring's update, a few months ago, that they finally shipped features to manage notebook pages, such as moving a page or inserting a blank page. It's one of the very basic features the device should have, but I had owned the RM for over a year before finally getting that.

I understand they're a small company with a small software team, but I think it's still important to point out the software weaknesses while saying that the hardware is indeed amazing.

Post reply on HN